A Long Answer to a Stupid Question

Hello!  I'm back from my family vacation, and you'll be glad to know that Paris, France was absolutely formidable:

Yeah, I realize the Tour is usually in July, but this year they moved it up to February just for me.

Now that I'm back, I'd like to address a question someone posed in the comments section of my last post, and I'm doing so for two reasons:

1) It's a question that pops up semi-regularly;
B) I find it really annoying so I'd like to answer it definitively once and for all.

And now, here is that question:

Anonymous said...

I guess one question would be why someone so involved in cycling would live in such a gawd-foresaken-place when it comes to actually riding a bike in the first place? Is there a worse place on earth? Perhaps Sydney Australia? But the weather's better there so perhaps NYC is the worst?

February 22, 2019 at 8:31 AM

Then, after various insightful comments from other commenters:

Anonymous said...

Some guy from upstate: "Clearest advantage as transportation" I get that, but Snobby writes a lot about FUN rather than just slogging through congested streets using a bike as transportation. The challenge of finding a fun place to ride seems semi-impossible in a place like NYC, DC or (gawd) Florida so I don't think it's odd to wonder why someone so involved in the activity/lifestyle (rather than a simple schmuck who just uses a bike to get around) would choose to live in a cycling hell like NYC.

February 24, 2019 at 4:51 AM

Okay, before anything else, this comment was in response to my latest Outside column, which is specifically about the NYPD.  So sure, I'll move someplace else in America where there aren't issues with law enforcement, just as soon as you tell me where that is.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

I thought so.

All right, now that we've got that out of the way, let's address the cycling part, specifically:

I guess one question would be why someone so involved in cycling would live in such a gawd-foresaken-place when it comes to actually riding a bike in the first place?

Well, for one thing, I was born here.  For another, if you read my lengthy CV you know that once I grew up I realized I wanted to be in book publishing, an industry which pretty much only exists in a meaningful way in New York.  (And yes, my first three books were published by Chronicle Books, which is based in San Francisco, but nobody who already lives in New York moves to San Francisco to begin a career in book publishing, and no writer anywhere moves just to be close to their publisher.)

Oh sure, there are people who finish high school or college and decide, "Hey, Tucson seems like a cool place, I think I'll pack a rucksack and live there for awhile."  That's fantastic for them, but I'm simply not wired that way.  I was born clenched of sphincter, not free of spirit.  Furthermore, if I've got a lifetime of roots in a place that's not only interesting and full of opportunity but also happens to be the very best place in the country to pursue my professional ambitions then why the would I pull up stakes and leave?  And on top of that, it's not like I had any idea when I was 21 that I would wind up a semi-professional bike blogger.  Not only was there no such thing as a blog, but the fixie craze was still like a decade away--and even then, living in New York meant I was in the perfect place to make fun of it.

Oh, and one other small thing: my wife has a highly successful career in--you guessed it--book publishing, so if you think I'm going to say "We need to move to [x] because riding bikes is more fun there" then you don't really understand how life works on any level.

And what about the fun part, anyway?  Are there more fun places than New York City to ride a bike?  Undoubtedly.  In fact, as a semi-professional bike blogger I've visited a number of them.  However, that doesn't mean I'm going to drop everything, move to Gaioli in Chianti, and ride my own personal Eroica every day for the rest of my life--because again, that's not how life works.  (And also the tight sphincter part.)

Even so, what a lot of people don't realize is that New York City and the surrounding area is actually a fantastic place to ride a bike, especially when you consider what a massive metropolitan area this is.  Here are just a few reasons why:

• You can race your road bike pretty much every week (and often multiple times a week) from March through September ;
• There's a outdoor velodrome in Queens and you can race there too;
• There's a cyclocross clinic on Randall's Island as well as an actual sanctioned cyclocross race in Queens;
• There is excellent road and mountain biking just outside the city, and if you don't like riding a lone there are about a zillion teams, clubs, group rides, shop rides, charity rides, fondos, etc.;
• You don't have to set foot in a car to do any of the above--but if you do get in a car now you can do all the regional road, mountain, and cyclocross races, too;
• Don't want to race?  Go bikepacking.  Go camp on a beach.  Go up into the mountains.  Go take a foliage tour of New England and ride though covered bridges and shit like that.  It's the Northeast for fuck's sake, there's great riding here!

Even the weather here gets a bad rap.  However, riding conditions in spring and fall are generally superb.  Yes, summer is hot, but that's true in most places.  And while the winter may seem daunting, the fact is that brutally cold days are relatively few, and one advantage of living in a big city is that even when it snows the roads are rarely impassable by bike for more than a day or two, which means even if we get a fuckload of snow you'll probably be able to ride in Central Park within a couple of days.  For people like me who can't bring themselves to ride the trainer, that's a big deal.

But let's set aside ambitious recreational exploits and look at regular everyday knocking-around-town riding.  Do we have our fair share of homicidal motorists and knuckleheaded cops?  Of course.  This is America, after all.  Still, having ridden in many cities around the country, I'd say we're easily among the best places to ride a bike, and in certain respects we are very possibly the best place to ride a bike.  The reason for this is that the bicycle is--and has always been--very much a part of the fabric of this city.  A place like Portland may have a higher percentage of bike commuters, and it may be a less stressful place to ride simply due to the lower density, but I doubt there's any place in America that rivals the sheer diversity of people on bikes you get here in New York City.  Ride around here and you'll see people of every race, gender, age group, and income bracket using bicycles of every conceivable kind--including for work.  Ride around Portland and you'll see a bunch of interchangeable white people in Showers Pass jackets.  (I'm not trying to knock Portland.  I really like Portland.  But, you know, it's Portland.)  Sure, a place like Portland is ostensibly more of a bike city.  But there's nowhere else in America where riding a bike to get around is as boringly normal as it is here in New York.  In that regard, to beat us you've got to leave the country, that's the bottom line.

Now I'd certainly never try to convince someone they should move here, nor would I try to talk someone into loving New York City if they've spent real time here and discovered they hate it.  And who knows, maybe one day when the kids are grown I'll retire to some cycling paradise.  (There are definitely other places in this country I could imagine myself living one day, more on that tomorrow.)  In the meantime though, if you're looking for everything life has to offer--including top-notch cycling--this is a pretty good place to be.  There are eight million of us here after all, and while we may be crazy, we can't all be stupid, can we?  (Though if you're a New Yorker who's both crazy and stupid apparently you get to be president.)